over in his mind in the hope that something brilliant might come of it when his neighbour addressed him again. ‘I am sorry you are disappointed of your chaise, sir; but if you choose to share mine, you are very welcome. I am going to London. May I trouble you for the butter?’
‘You are very kind indeed, sir,’ said Jack. ‘I should be most uncommon obliged –
particularly wish to be in London today. Allow me to pour you a glass of wine.’
They naturally fell into conversation: it was a conversation of no very great importance, bearing chiefly on the weather, the strong likelihood of rain later in the day, the appetite engendered by sea-air, and the difference between the true Dover sole and upstarts from the German Ocean, but it was pleasant, harmless and friendly. It nevertheless succeeded in angering the spectacled man, who directed indignant looks across the table and left them at the time
of cheese, beating his chair upon the floor in a very marked manner and stalking off to join the flash cove in the doorway.
‘I am afraid we have displeased the Quaker,’ observed Jack.
‘I do not believe he is a Quaker at all,’ said Black Coat quietly after a pause in which some of their neighbours farther down the table also left. ‘I know many respectable people –
Gurneys and Harwoods – who are Friends. They behave like reasonable beings, not like characters on the provincial stage. Those peculiarities of dress and language are quite exploded among them, I understand; they have been laid aside these fifty years and more.’
‘But why should he wish to pass for a Quaker?’ asked Jack.
‘Why, indeed? Conceivably to profit from their reputation for honesty and plain-dealing.
But the heart of man is unsearchable,’ said Black Coat with a smile, picking up a leather folder that leaned against his chair, ‘and perhaps he is only pursuing some illicit amour, or escaping from his creditors. Now, sir, if you will forgive me, I shall collect my bag.’
‘But will you not stay for the coffee?’ cried jack, who had ordered a pot.
‘Alas, I dare not,’ said Black Coat. ‘It disagrees with me. But do not hurry, I beg. My inner man is already somewhat disturbed, and I shall retire for longer than it will take you to drink two or even three pots of coffee. Let us meet at the chaise in say a quarter of an hour. It will be in that deserted-looking yard behind the kitchen, where the Ship used to keep its carriages.’
In fourteen minutes Jack Aubrey walked into the yard, carrying his valise. Even before he turned the corner he heard a strange bawling, wrangling din, and the moment he reached the gateway he saw the Quaker and the flash cove grappling with his friend, while the little post-boy clung to the horses’ heads, rising clear from the ground at every plunge and shouting as loud as his faint breathless treble would allow. The flash cove had knocked Black Coat’s hat down over his eyes and was busy throttling him:
the Quaker, giving awkward kicks whenever he could, was tugging at the leather case that Black Coat clung to with all his might.
Jack might be slow conceiving a joke but he was exceedingly brisk in action. He ran at top speed from the gateway, launched his sixteen stone in a flying leap upon the flash cove’s back, cracked his head upon the cobbles and sprang up to deal with the Quaker. But the Quaker, surprisingly nimble for his years and bulk, was already flying fast, and Black Coat, extricating himself from his hat, caught Jack’s arm and cried ‘Let him go, let him go, if you please. Pray let him go. And this drunken ruffian too,’ – for the flash cove was getting to his knees. ‘I am infinitely obliged to you sir, but pray let there be no scandal, no outcry, no noise.’ People from the Ship’s kitchen were at last beginning to congregate and stare.
‘No constable?’ asked Jack.
‘Oh no, no: let us have no public notice of any kind, I beg,’ said Black Coat very earnestly.
‘Pray let us get in. You are not hurt? You have your baggage. Let us get in at once.’
For some time, indeed until the post-chaise was out of Dover and well on the open London road, Black Coat dusted his clothes, rearranged his cravat, and smoothed the papers in his wrenched and battered case. He was clearly very much shaken, although in reply to jack’s inquiries he said he was ‘only a little bruised and scraped
– nothing in comparison of a fall from a horse.’ But a little past Buckland, with the horses going easy and the chaise running smoothly along, he said, ‘I am infinitely obliged to you, sir. Infinitely obliged, not only for your rescuing me and my possessions from those scoundrels but also for letting the matter drop. If the constable had been called, we must have been delayed; and far worse than
that, there must have been a great deal of troublesome noise, a scandal. In my position I cannot afford the least breath of scandal or public notice.’
‘To be sure, scandal is a damned unpleasant thing,’ said jack. ‘But I wish we had tossed them into the horse-pond.’
There was a silence, and after a while Black Coat said ‘I owe you an explanation.’
‘Not at all,’ said Jack.
The other bowed and went on, ‘I am just returned from a confidential mission to the Continent, and those fellows were waiting for me. I noticed the ruffian with the Belcher neckerchief on the ship – wondered how he came to be there – and regretted having been obliged to leave my servant in Paris with my principal, a stout, courageous young man, my gamekeeper’s son. The foolery about the chaise was a mere blind, to give their attack some countenance: they were not after the chaise, nor were they after my property, my watch and what little money I carry. No, sir, they were after the information, the news, that I carry here,’ – laying his hand on the leather case – ‘News that would be worth a mint of money, in certain hands.’
‘Good news, I trust?’ said Jack, looking out of the window at a handsome young woman, pink with exercise, cantering along the broad verge, followed by a groom.
‘Pretty good, sir, I believe: at least, many people will think so,’ said Black Coat, smiling; but then, perhaps feeling that he had been indiscreet, he coughed, and said ‘Here is the rain we were speaking of.’
They changed horses at Canterbury, and when Jack tried to pay for them or at least for his share, Black Coat was immovable: ‘No, no, it would not do; he must beg to he excused. He could not allow his preserver to put his hand in his pocket; in any event the cost would be the same whether Jack were there or not; and to end with a knock-down argument, Government was paying.’ When they moved off again he suggested that unless Jack had
any objection they should sup at Sittingbourne. ‘Many an excellent meal have I had at the Rose,’ he said, ‘and they have a Chambolle-Musigny of ninety-two which is one of the finest wines I have ever drunk. Then again, we shall be served by the daughter of the house, a young person I delight to contemplate. I am no satyr, but I do find that pretty creatures about one add much to the pleasure of life. By the way,’ he said after a pause, ‘it is rather absurd, hut I do not believe I have introduced myself: my name is Ellis Palmer, very much at your service.’
‘How do you do, sir?’ said Jack, shaking his hand. ‘Mine is John Aubrey.’
‘Aubrey,’ said Palmer meditatively. ‘That is a name which has been much in my mind recently, in connexion with chelonians. May I ask whether you are any kin to the famous Mr Aubrey of Testudo aubreii, that most splendid of the tortoise kind?’
‘I suppose I am, in a way,’ said Jack, with something as near to a coy simper as his deeply tanned, battle-scarred, weatherbeaten face could manage. ‘Indeed, the creature was called after me: not that I had any hand in the matter, however. I mean, its discovery was no merit of mine.’
‘Good Heavens!’ cried Palmer. ‘Then you must be Captain Aubrey, of the Navy; and you must necessarily know Dr Maturin.’
‘He is my particular friend,’ said Jack. ‘We have sailed together these many years, during this war and the last. Do you know him?’
‘I have never had the honour of being introduced to him, but I have studied all his valuable works – his non-medical works, that is to say, for I am only a naturalist, and a mere dilettante at that; parliamentary drafting is my occupation